How to Choose the RIGHT Business Idea (7 Figure Blueprint Series - Part 2)

Hey everyone, Brennan Turner, host of The Better Life Podcast, and today, I'm continuing the 7-figure business blueprint series that I started last week. If you missed episode 1, go back and listen to that one first. Today, we're talking about how to choose what business to build. I'm going to show you why boring beats flashy, and I'll walk you through a real million-dollar business idea from scratch. So, hey, DM me, 7 Blueprint, the number 7 Blueprint on Instagram, at Beardy Brand, if you want the PDF summary of the whole series. Let's go. Hey, what if I told you that you could come up with a million-dollar-a-year business idea in the next 60 seconds? Actually, let me prove it to you. So right now, I'm going to give you an example. Right now, I have a list of chores to do around my house that I have not gotten to in ages. Now, I'm pretty rich, so I know that I could hire someone, but that honestly is just a hassle. And it's simple stuff. Hang a picture here, take an old mattress to the dump over there, install a doggie door because my dog keeps crepping on the floor, stuff like that. So my question for you, is there a service that you could think about right now that would pay that I would pay to solve these issues? Like, assume for a minute that I have tons and tons of money, but I have no time at all. So what is a business idea, a service that would make me say yes to paying you money? And to pivot your thinking a little bit, I'm not necessarily saying that you would need to come fix those things. Think a little bigger. Could you think of a business or design a business idea that maybe solves my problem for me? I have the video or podcast for a minute and jot down a few ideas. You got some? Now, maybe you run a business called to do done and a customer gets a handyman at a predetermined time for a predetermined price every month or every week. Like, I would love that. I would pay for that right now. Maybe your idea was totally different. I'm just spitballing here, but maybe you didn't pause the video long enough to focus on it or whatever. Maybe just not good ideas. That's fine too. But the point I'm trying to make is this. Businesses are nothing but solving people's frustrations. Another way to say that every single frustration is a potential business. And by the end of this video, you are going to see problems and opportunities everywhere you look. So let's get into it. What's going on, everyone? Welcome back to the seven figure business blueprint series. My name is Brandon Turner, beauty branded on the socials. And this is a six part series. This is part two of a six part series that's going to give you everything you need to build a business that does a million dollars a year or more. I'm calling it the seven figure business blueprint series. And this is pillar two choosing what million dollar business to build. Now if you missed the first video, go watch that first. I'll link it in the description or put it like here on my screen somewhere. And you can just go there. But in that video, we talked about the mental game. Like how do you get fed up enough to actually decide and commit and then focus on one thing. And the dip tries to kill most people and why consistency beats intensity every time, but both are needed. Like that's the foundation, the mental stuff. And you need it before anything else is going to make sense. Now today we're getting more practical. We're going to figure out exactly what business you should build that's going to make you a million bucks a year and profit. There's where a lot of people get stuck. They spin their wheels trying to find the perfect business idea. They mean they're a books and courses and spreadsheets comparing all the different options. They never actually start anything. So let me simplify this just a little bit for you. Every business that has ever existed started by solving a problem like Amazon started trying solving the problem of having to drive to a bookstore, Uber solved the problem of having to hail a cab. Your local plumber solves a problem of water not going where it should go. Look, you need to train yourself to see problems everywhere. Every time you're frustrated, every time you hear someone else frustrated and complaining, every time you think, ah, this is annoying. It's got to be a better way. Like that's a potential business. So start asking yourself, who would pay to have this fixed? And if the answer is, yeah, a lot of people, you might be on to something. The best business ideas often come from your own life and your own problems. So what problems do you have? What do you wish existed? What do you spend money on that could be done better? I mean, maybe a few more examples. This is from a flight that I took there a couple of weeks ago. So I'm sitting in this flight and I'm thinking, this seat is way too small. And then I had a headache because I usually do when I fly. And then my one year old needs constant entertainment because it's like too young for an iPad, but too old to just like sleep. My sunglasses are on top of my head and they're giving me a worse headache, but I have nowhere to put them. My power outlet is too loose. It doesn't hold a charger in. The floor under my kids' feet is an absolute disaster with crumbs and the bathroom is disgusting. Like those are all pains and frustrations and problems. And I bet you if you sat down, you can come up with half a dozen business ideas on how to solve each one. Let me just spit ball one right now. Like I get headaches when I fly. Why do I get headaches when I fly? I'm probably dehydrated. Yes, I get by water. I'm like, water is usually not enough. It's like I need electrolyte to this. So what if we created a water electrolyte brand that had to do with hydration when you fly and was called like, you know, flight water, right? And you sell it at airports, flight water helps cure your headaches when you're flying or whatever. Maybe cure is just a shock of a word. You see what I did there? I just took a problem and I said, what could be a marketing angle really? Like it's not even a new product. It's just like this could work. Now look, everywhere all around us all the time there are frustrations every day. And some people complain about them. Most people accept them and just move on. But some people say, hmm, wonder I'm one other people have this problem and what can we do to solve it? What would people pay to solve it? Now suddenly when you think that way, you realize there's a never ending number of businesses to start. So you just start training your brain to think differently about problems. And again, I'm not talking about starting the next sales force or anthropic or open AI or anything crazy like that. Sometimes the best businesses are just the boring ones, water. Like boring businesses almost always beat the flashy ones. When you scroll social media though, you see all the sexy startups, the tech founders that are ringing like the NASDAQ Bell and the AI or the crypto millionaires, the viral app that took over the whole world. Like that's what gets attention. We don't see though, or the thousands of people who tried to build the next Uber or the next open AI and they failed. Like the graveyard of startups that burned through all the investor money and they're just chasing a dream that never materialized is a big. The 99% who didn't make it, like they're not talked about. Meanwhile, there's a guy in your town who owns a laundry mat. That's not sexy. Nobody writes articles about it. But it cash flows, like nine grand a month because he sells a problem and he's working like a few hours a week. There's a woman who started a commercial cleaning company in your area. Yeah, that's boring as dirt. She just sold it for like a couple million bucks. So that's what I'm talking about. Landscaping, bookkeeping, HVAC, junk removal, pest control, water. Like these businesses aren't going like to land you on the cover of Forbes magazine, but they work and they generate real cash for real people. And they're proven models that have been making people wealthy for decades. Why? Because they solve real problems for real people in real situations. They're also the most likely to survive the coming AI disruption, the AI apocalypse. So no matter how good Chat GBT is, it's not going to unclog my toilet or prune my roses or feed my chickens or massage my back. So don't let survivorship bias and social media trick you into chasing the next Uber when you could just be building a reliable, profitable, boring, wealth cash flow machine. Now, here's a hack that'll help you start making money faster. Solve expensive problems for people who have money. Now, I see this mistake a lot with new entrepreneurs. They try to solve cheap problems for broke people because they're usually cheap and broke. So they think, I'm going to make an app that helps college students save five bucks on pizza. Okay, good luck with that. The five dollar problem for broke people, it's a brutal business. Like you got to find a million customers just to make any kind of money at all. And then those customers are haggling over every dollar and leaving bad reviews over nothing. And they churn constantly. But can you solve a $50,000 problem for a business? Like a business owner. It would gladly pay thousands of dollars to save or make tens of thousands of dollars, right? And you need far fewer customers and they've got bigger budgets and they pay on time and they don't always nickel and dime you. So go where the money is. And I'm not talking about just business problems. In fact, I think one of the best opportunities is solving a rich person's personal problems. I'll give you some examples more. I already talked about some of my frustrations, but I'm a rich guy. So this is perfect for me to explain. Like I have a lot of problems as a rich guy. Like as I mentioned earlier, things are always breaking in my house, but not enough to hire a full-time handyman. Also my kids, they're on screens way too much. Also I want to eat simple, healthy meals, but I don't want to just microwave nasty like plastic wrap food from some delivery company. I also don't want to hire a private chef. That just seems excessive. Oh, my garbage. Like I had to take the can out to the road every single week. I hate it. My garage full of crap. I don't like that. But sorting it and like I don't have time for that. So look through that list. I just gave you. Those are all problems. Does anything stand out to you as a problem? You could maybe solve. Let's take that last one actually. The crowded messy garage. What solution could fix that? So most people would immediately think, well I could go and clean a rich person's garage. That sounds dumb. Okay. But a few problems. First, you're still just trading your time for dollars. Like it's just another job. Your income's capped. So if it's just you cleaning garages, what are you going to make at best like 50 grand a year, like 100 grand a year at most? Like I want to get you to a million dollars a year or more. Now second, if you just go clean people's garages. As a customer, I would fear you have no idea what the toss, what to keep. Like you would just be asking me questions all day and I'd be out there with you sorting stuff. I don't have time for that. So I wouldn't hire you because I don't trust you could do it good enough. So should you give up on the idea? Yeah, maybe, but probably not. Because you can just ask, how do we sell those issues? So here's what my brain came up with just spitball in here and like a few seconds of thinking through it. Like what if you had a couple people, a two-man team, not you, two-man team, they begin the day with a 15 minute walk through with the customer. They record the conversation on video as the customer quickly does high-level keep donate sell trash of various things. The video gets transcribed by AI into a checklist. The customer. than reviews that. Then a simple app gets built, usually maybe a vibe coding tool, like lovable or replete, and you can do that in like 15 minutes. So in this app, the team will then throw out the day, snap photos of items, and then the owner can look at the app and swipe like Tinder. Up means keep, down means trash, left means donate, right means sell. Now, I don't need to spend all day then with the team, I just check the app and I swipe. Quick decisions, like, oh yeah, sell quick, you know, sell trash, donate. The team just follows my instructions when they're stuck. They clean the entire garage. They provide shelving, black bins, clear labels, they hang up tools and bikes, and then the company's at this great brand. It's called Garage Them. Sounds nice, right? The television, like, it's got the operations to back it up. And I would gladly pay good money for that right now, but here's the thing. If you came to me right now and knocked on my door and said hi, and you're in like some, you know, like dirty outfit and you're like, hi, I'll let you clean your garage for you. There's no way I would hire you. I'm like, no, I don't trust you, I don't know you. Like, I have no idea what you're doing in my garage. And even if I did trust you, because, you know, maybe you went to my church or, you know, somebody recommended you, what do you worth, like, 30 bucks an hour? I mean, that's what labor is worth, 20, 30 bucks an hour. So you work all day and you make a couple hundred bucks. Look, look, I'm not saying that's nothing, but dude, it's not a million dollars a year because you're just doing some solo thing. But if you rent a company called Garage Them and you had a beautiful app and a logo and before and after photos and testimonials and you pitched me a $1,500 plan for the whole day to organize my garage, I'd be like, yeah, hell yes, on the spot. And that's the power of like positioning your offer and selling the service, which we'll talk about in the next video. Maybe it's the video after that when we talk about marketing. I think it's the fourth video I'll be talking about that. But you're not selling labor at that point because labor is only worth 20 or 30 bucks an hour. You're selling a trustworthy process and a clean, zen-like garage. You're selling the outcome. And that's worth 10 times more. It's the same thing though. So you pay maybe a couple hundred bucks to a couple employees, right? And maybe you clear a 500 or even more on a garage cleaning? That's cool. If you did 20 of those a month, that's a lot of money before you're overhead. Now, is that enough to retire your wife? Maybe, maybe not. But here's where I get really pumped up about this. There's levels to this game. Like, could you scale to multiple different two-man teams? Could you get a full-time sales guy? Could you get pricing higher? Could you hire, you know, give people commission to be salesman, go door to door? Could you add other services like Carzan or Handyman's End? Could you, you know, there's so much you could do. You can make this a multi-million dollar business. It's not getting taken over by AI. It solves a real pain point. It's simple. It's low overhead and it's profitable. And look, that was just one idea, spit-balling, as we make this video. Like, there are millions of more ideas out there because there's millions of problems out there. Now, we're gonna come back to garage then in just a moment 'cause it's a cool idea. But first, here's a trap I constantly see. People think they need to invent something brand new. They wanna be the next Elon Musk, the next Zuckerberg. Like, out of this idea, they've been sitting on for three years. Look, it's not gonna happen. And that thinking is gonna keep you broke. The truth is, you don't need a new idea. You need a proven model. Like, a business that's already working for thousands of other people that you can just do better, a little better. And you can execute in your market, in your city, in your niche. Like, there are people are making six or seven figures with junk removal, with lawn care, with pressure washing, bookkeeping, commercial cleaning, mobile car detailing. Like, no one's making movies about those guys. Nobody's making a movie about a guy who built a million dollar a year pressure washing company. That's lame. But that guy's financially free. He's home for dinner. His wife doesn't have to work unless she wants to. She's raising the kids. He takes three months off every year to go Hawaii. Meanwhile, that idea guy is still tweaking his pitch deck. He's still working on his little invention. So here's my rule. If you can't find a hundred people making money doing it, you're just gambling. You're not building. Now sometimes gambling pays off, sure. But it's not building a business. It's gambling. So find somebody doing exactly what you want to do, study them, model it, take what works, like improve it, that's not stealing, it's smart. McDonald's didn't invent the hamburger. It's not even that good of a hamburger. They just perfected the system. Your job isn't to reinvent the wheel. Your job is to roll it better than other guys in your town. Now, this is actually one thing I love about real estate investing. Literally millions of people invest in real estate. This is not a real estate investing video, but millions of people do it. And yet it still works because hundreds of millions of people need it, like the housing. And all of a sudden you need to do what I do. You don't need to buy rentals or flip houses or mobile home parks, but you see what I mean? It's boring, it's predictable, but it's profitable because you do it right. Now, when you pick your business idea, one mistake I want to encourage you to avoid, is just picking something because you like it. It's like an interest of yours. It's a passion. Like look, a lot of business coaches will tell their people to follow their passion. But can we be honest for a minute? Like your passion for 16th century poetry is not going to pay the bills. Neither's your bowling passion, neither's your plain music, unless you're one of the lucky few. Like I'm not saying you should do something that drives you to drink from boredom, right? Like don't do that. You need some fire for it. You have to have some interest. For example, like early on I tried to read a book on day trading. Oh, I made it through like three pages and I wanted to pluck my eyes out. Hate it every second of that book. But then I read a book on real estate investing and I was like, oh, this is kind of cool. It caught my attention. Now, would I rather be on stage on a guitar like well, beautiful women through their underwear at me from the crowd? Yeah, sure. That sounds great. But that's a one in a million shot. And besides I'm married. So Heather, if you're watching this high, that sounds awful. I would never do that. What a terrible bunch of heathen women. But in reality, yeah. Like I could be the lucky eye who makes my passion my income. But those are exceptions, not rules. They are gambling. And even if it comes true, when people turn their passion into their income, almost everyone loses interest in that passion. So you're not even chasing your passions. Like you just ended up hating it. Look, you need enough fire for the thing to survive the dip that we talked about in the last video. So if you absolutely hate it, don't do it. But once you start making really good money and you start working fewer hours, that's something you're always gonna be passionate about. That's when you get fired up more. So money will make you passionate. So you're looking for something at the intersection of three things. It solves a problem. It is a proven model. And see, you have at least some fire for it. You hit those three. You're definitely on your way for a million dollar per year business. But here's another common mistake. People think that they have to go wide to reach the maximum number of people. You wanna be all things to all people. You need to make an app that helps people with a to-do list. You think you need to start a fitness brand for everybody who wants to get healthy. Or you wanna start a newsletter that's just for entrepreneurs. Or you wanna help people find financial freedom through real estate investing. But for new people into an industry, we're trying to build. This is why it's so dangerous. Being for everyone means you're actually for no one. This is great essay from like 20 years ago. The guy named Kevin Kelly wrote it. It's called "The Thousand True Fans" totally changed my life. And he basically said, "You don't need a million customers. You need a thousand people who love what you do. A thousand people who pay a thousand bucks a year is a million dollars." Now, Alex Hermosi, you guys have heard him. Alex Hermosi drives this home so well in his book, "Hundred Million Dollar Offers." He says, "The more specific your niche is, the more money you can charge." So a generalist competes on price. A specialist commands a premium. Like if you need heart surgery, do you want the general surgeon who does a little bit of everything? Or do you want the specialist who's done 5,000 heart surgeries? Do you want the specialist? You'll pay way more, even if it's 10 times the normal rate. So don't be the to-do app for everybody. Maybe be the to-do app for stay-at-home moms. And don't be the fitness brand for everybody. Maybe you're the fitness brand for busy CFOs. Don't be the newsletter for entrepreneurs. Maybe you're the newsletter for faith-driven tech entrepreneurs. Like you don't want to be the community to help people find financial freedom through real estate investing. You can be the community that helps people find success in section eight affordable house investing. Do you see the difference? We want to narrow down. And if you came to me and told me that you have an AI consulting business that helps other businesses implement AI in their business, I would think, "A." Yeah, I get that pitch a hundred times a day in my Instagram inbox and B, there's no way that you understand my business. So I don't trust at all what you have to say. Even if you did convince me to hire you, I wouldn't want to pay you very much for your knowledge because of those things. I just don't trust that you would be able to really help me. And maybe I'd pay a few thousand bucks. But look, if you came to me and said, "You ran an AI consulting business that worked exclusively to install AI into large 5000 plus unit under management, property management, residential real estate firms." Well, shoot now, a hundred percent. I'm going to take that phone call with you and likely pay you tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars because now your pitch is different. And I believe that you actually will understand my business 'cause that's all you do. But the funny thing is, the actual implementation of your AI business might not be any different as a generalist or a specialist. Just like the surgeon who does the general surgery might not do any worse than the specialist. But from an outside perspective, who do I want? I would pay 10 to 100 times more for the specialist because you're a specialist. I trust that you were going to know my business. That's what Hermosey was getting at. And that's what's going to get you your million dollar a year or more business. The riches really are in the niches. Now, of course, there is such a thing as way to narrow. Like, especially in industries where like the lifetime value of a customer is low, like you're not going to make a lot of money. For example, you're probably don't want to build a dog walking business just for CFOs who own pit bulls, who live in Scottsdale. Because there's like seven of them, right? Like that's silly. At that point, you've carved the market down so small, there's just not enough opportunity out there. So yeah, there's a balance there. You want to niche down enough to become known, trusted, and differentiated in that industry, but not so much that you just choke off all demand. So the sweet spot is where the niche is specific. I think enough that people instantly say, "Yeah, that is for me." But still, it's large enough that you can build a real business around it. And this is where most people just get it wrong. They hear it niche down and they think that means limiting their opportunity and they get fearful and scared. But that's the exact opposite. When you narrow your focus, that expands your opportunity because it gives you clarity. Clarity on your messaging, clarity in your offer, clarity in who you serve, and what problems you solve. So instead of whispering this vague promise to the masses, you would like to start making direct promises to a very specific kind of person. And that specific promise converts. That's why the fastest growing businesses are often not the ones trying to be everything to everyone. They're the ones that just become the obvious choice for a very particular group. Like they own a category in the customer's mind. So when somebody says, "I need help with this exact problem," your name comes up every time immediately. That's the goal, not broad awareness, specific dominance. So don't ask, "How do I serve the most people?" Ask, "Whose problem can I solve better than almost everyone else?" And we don't ask, "What giant market can I enter and compete in?" It's like, "What market can I become world-class and famous in?" Because once you become the go-to person for a specific niche, you could always expand later. In fact, my stories exactly like that. Early on, when I started doing real estate education, I was like 20 mid-20s. I wanted to start teaching real estate online. I had owned a bunch, I bought a bunch, and so I thought, "I want to make a blog and try to make some money off this." But rather than going real estate education, Brandon Turner, like that wasn't my niche, I literally bought the domain name real estate in your 20s.com. Because I had to fight against all the gurus that existed out there on how to learn real state. But when I was real estate in your 20s.com, what do you think anybody in their 20s who wanted to get in the real estate? Where would they end up? On my website. They'd be like, "Yeah, that's my guy. He's the guy." And then once I established that beachhead, I was able to move over to the bigger pockets community in the podcast there and I got to go wide. And so today, I'm even wider. Today I'm teaching business stuff, not even just real estate, but I earn the right to do that over time. And to be honest, you guys, I would make more money and probably be more successful if I still niche down and went and taught like mobile home park investing. If I started a mobile home park course, I'd probably kill it. I still want to because it's not my one thing right now. Even though I love mobile home parks. So go narrow enough to matter, go deep enough to dominate, then earn the right to expand. Now, one more thing before we check back in on Jake. So before you commit to your seven figure business, ask yourself this question. This is important right now. Is AI going to kill your business in the next three years? Like some businesses, maybe even most, are going to be decimated. Like, basic content writing gone, simple graphic design gone, data entry gone, first level customer support gone. Like a business I would love to start right now would be virtual assistant placement services for real estate investors. That's nitched. It's something I know a lot about. I use a lot of VAs. I have an audience that would use a lot of VAs. I could make a ton of money right now by offering VAs services. But look, that industry is on a chopping block. AI is going to take it out soon. I'm not going to go waste my time and build that. So what's harder to replace businesses built on human trust and relationships? That's what's hard. Local service businesses where someone shows up in person, the high stakes advice where people want a human in the loop. So build something AI is not going to make obsolete, but it's something that's going to make more powerful. Now, speaking of making a choice, let's check in on Jake from the first video. If you didn't watch that video or maybe just don't remember because it's been a little while throughout the seven figure business blueprint series, I'm wrapping up each lesson with a story of a man named Jake who's trying to build a seven figure business so he can retire his wife, increases income, decreases work and raise his kids wealthy. In the last video, Jake finally hit the tipping point of being fed up with his inability to fully provide for his wife, his wife's name and Maria, by the way. So he committed to doing whatever it took to get her out. So now Jake spends a week with his eyes open. He looks for problems everywhere. Like his neighbors complaining about finding reliable lawn care. His coworker just paid 400 bucks for junk removal from his garage. Interesting. His mom frustrated with her bookkeeper. Hmm. Now he's seen these problems everywhere. So Jake picks one junk removal more specifically. He's going to build garage then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm letting Jake steal my idea. It's fine. Ideas are dime a dozen, right? Ideas don't even matter. Well, as much as you think they do. We're going to talk about more about that next week. Building is what matters and selling it. So Jake's reasoning is solid, right? Low startup costs, just a truck with some muscle. He gets immediate cash flow because people pay on the spot. Wealthy homeowners like wealthy homeowners will pay a thousand dollars or more for a clean garage. So, Tanson, so AI is in a threat. And there's a clear path to scaling with more trucks and more workers. Now is he passionate about trash? No. But he is fired up about freedom and about serving other people and garage then is a vehicle to get there. So that my friends is pillar two. Decide what business to build by deciding what problem to solve. If this is helping you, drop a comment and let me know what business idea you're thinking about or what problems you see. And if you're not subscribed yet, follow me @beardybranding right now. So you don't miss the next video. Because in the next video, we're going to actually get into pillar three, actually building the business. I'm going to show you the lean startup methodology that made me millions of dollars. I'm going to show you how to get customers to pay you before you build anything and why most entrepreneurs are just playing dress up and the huge mistake that I see entrepreneurs making all the time because of AI. So hit subscribe and I'll see you in the next one.